Gadfly Bites 6/10/19 – No surprise

1. Phew! We can stop our worrying. Dayton City Schools has at last found uses for the tens of millions of dollars in loose cash it has on hand. Well, just a little over of half of the pile anyway. So what’s on the list? Raises for teachers (natch), expanded transportation bus tokens for high schoolers, thunder storm support mental health care workers, and a bunch of new custodians large portion of the building maintenance that’s been on hold across the district for up to ten years. Call me cynical but isn’t this money just going to hire and give raises to a bunch of union workers aren’t these the very things that they could have been spending on incrementally over the last few years so as to avoid both the unused pile of cash AND the list of undone work? (Dayton Daily News, 6/6/19)
   

2. Editors in Toledo still don’t like the state’s existing academic distress commission paradigm, and now they don’t like either of these two replacement options either. (Toledo Blade, 6/9/19) On the same subject, the Vindy took its sweet time to cover the news that outgoing district CEO Krish Mohip testified in favor of the state’s academic distress paradigm last week. Probably taking time to make sure the president of the elected school board got some room to react to the testimony. ‘Cause that’s in there too. (Vindicator, 6/8/19)
   

3. On a related note, this commentary in the Plain Dealer wants you to know that the League of Women Voters of Ohio hates standardized tests and all that goes along with them – up to and including academic distress commissions. Surprise! (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/9/19)
   

4. What’s the replacement for standardized testing? Maybe social-emotional learning. Or maybe not. Sounds like the state board of education is going to have some good discussion on that topic this week. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/8/19)

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